


intertwined and overrun

by independentalto



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, brief mentions of vic and izzy, somewhere in the midst of their first divorce i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27721487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/independentalto/pseuds/independentalto
Summary: In the aftermath of their (first) divorce, Hunter has some thoughts.
Relationships: Lance Hunter/Bobbi Morse
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	intertwined and overrun

**Author's Note:**

> I will say that first off, I have no idea where the hell this came from and it probably should've stayed in the depths of my brain somewhere. 
> 
> Secondly, I'm also sort of suspending the disbelief that Bobbi and Hunter were...exultant in being divorced the first time? Outwardly, yes, but Hunter, at least, internally, not so much. 
> 
> Thirdly (whoops) I made a playlist to go with this, and I hope it helps capture some of the nuances that goes with it -- it's called [intertwined and overrun](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5rOY9nblkI2pdJlSP5QCnZ). (title matching eyyyy)

The first week she’s gone, it’s hell disguised as an angel. 

He allows himself the usual stages of grieving a divorce (providing anyone did that; who in their right mind grieved a  _ divorce _ ?), the triumphant drinks he gets with his mates the first night they’re apart, the smug change to his relationship status on Facebook while noting that she’s yet to change hers, even the tried-and-true act of piling the things Bobbi's missed into a cardboard box and depositing them gleefully in front of the apartment where she’s staying with Victoria Hand. 

It’s all things he’s  _ allowed _ to do as a newly-divorced man, yet all of it feels performative and hollow, and the vindictive victory that courses through Hunter’s veins via a couple of cold beers alone at night is quickly dulled by the even colder realization that when all is said and done, the cost of cutting Bobbi out of his life is her personally breaking his chest open and yanking his heart out.

The edges are still raw, jagged when he’s jolted into the empty state that is wakefulness without her every day: sharp pieces of hurt that jab themselves into his chest every time he so much as even fathoms thinking about her; if he hadn’t known better, he would say he was breathing in broken glass. But that was the thing about having been married to a biochemist – your emotional pain was no longer abstract, broken down instead into molecules and hormones and whittled down until every reaction had an explanation attached to it.

(Hell disguised as a blessing. Kind of like how they’d met, he snorts to himself every now and again. Who would’ve thunk it?)

His days pass by acclimatizing himself to Bobbi’s absence, fighting through the paralyzing numbness that screams that he is to do  _ nothing _ until he gets Bobbi back in his life, that he is incapable of even taking a step without knowing he’ll at least hear her voice that day. He tells himself that the pain will cease with time, that with each new day he wakes up, the tightness in his throat will lessen and he’ll no longer feel the urge to fight back a deluge of tears. 

All he has to do is breathe, he tells himself. Breathe, and hope that tomorrow it’s easier for him to fight slipping back into the comfortable skin of righteous anger.

There are some days he allows the anger to swallow him up, though, even just for a second – and it’s a bitter, vindictive snake that washes him full of resentment towards Bobbi, calls her a hellbeast and makes him the hero of his own story, as if they both hadn’t been the villains – and it haunts his limbs for days upon end, overtaking his ego and his actions until he’s slumped against a punching bag one night in pure defeat, Izzy having found him after spending one too many nights off of the grid. 

(Out of all of the secrets Isabelle Hartley keeps, she keeps closest the fact that it was Bobbi that prompted her hunt around the city, a casual inquiry turning into razor-sharp worry when Hunter’s usual haunts were empty.) 

He’s angry at everything those days, angry at what could’ve been and how maybe he should’ve tried harder, how  _ she _ should’ve tried harder – but marriage is a two-way street, he remembers, and it’s entirely possible that as much as they loved each other, there wasn’t enough in them  _ to _ try. Those days are arguably the worst, for the ones following it are filled with nothing but wallowed regret that saps his strength and admonishes him for visualizing her in a light that was completely uncalled for.

Because for all of his anger, for all of his attempts to drive her away, his love still stands. He’s spewed vitriolic words at her both in-person and in his head, but it still doesn’t change that at the end of the day, something inside of him will feel empty when he doesn’t hear her voice. It still doesn’t change the fact that a single touch from her hand is all it takes to quell the urge to scream into the void, doesn’t change that he only sleeps properly at night next to her warmth. It doesn’t change the fact that all it takes is a fond scoff of his name to put him in a better mood. And he’s not sure what terrifies him more: the ease in which he is hers or the idea that she will never need him in that way.

He’s a fool for driving her away, sure, (maybe they’re both fools for driving each other apart), but even more than that, he’s a fool for letting himself get swept up in the perfect storm that was Bobbi Morse to begin with.

It isn’t that he wants her to haunt him – on the contrary, he’s pretty sure they’ve both agreed they’ll benefit from being out of each other’s lives – but if there’s one thing that he’ll hold onto until the end of time, it’s that he is the bowling ball and she is gravity, pulling him to the center of her earth at ten meters a second. No matter how hard he tries, he will always be drawn to her, helpless to resist the laws of nature. 

(A little voice inside of him reasons that that’s  _ also _ why they need the divorce – sometimes, gravity must be defied to live a life free of fears, and unhealthily prolonged attachment is tempting the bull in the china shop. Everything about his life has Bobbi written on it, and it’s about time that he have something with his own signature scrawled across its surface, if not for the sake of his own emotional sanity.) 

Contrary to belief, he’s not resentful of how they turned out – they’re just not right for each other at the moment, their chaotic existences chock-full of incompatibilities they could’ve gotten past if he – no, they – hadn’t allowed them to fester. Things that their future selves can get past, if he allows himself to dream. 

But reality is a cruel mistress, and she’s one that shoves his head out of the clouds and into the grindstone, where he finds that the path to recovery is repetitive, treacherous and just as emotionally damaging as listening to Taylor Swift when you’re through a bottle of gin and counting. (Or, really, any time.) He finds himself constantly hovering over Bobbi’s contact, thumb visibly shaking in an effort not to dial the one person he knows will soothe his pain while simultaneously dealing it another blistering blow. He finds himself during multiple nights staring aimlessly at the ceiling of their bedroom, reliving memories playing out on an invisible screen in front of him and barely daring to breathe; he’s sure that if he does, the memories will shatter, scattered to the wind like the remnants of a swept-up spider web.

Somewhere, somehow, in his fog of thought and unshed tears and occasional tower of beer cans, he finds a shred of acceptance. And it’s not a lot, granted – the fact that he found one at all was almost nothing short of a miracle – but it’s a first step. A morning coffee brings the realization that there are indeed things that are meant to be, and despite their best efforts, he and Bobbi are not one of them. Maybe they  _ will _ be meant to be later on in time, maybe one day they’ll have that dream wedding where Bobbi will be a vision in white and he will feel nothing but complete contentment. All of it is a big  _ maybe _ , he muses to himself as he drained his coffee, with what-ifs stacked up to and across a packed ceiling that probably has no intention of breaking

But possible future or not, it’s necessary for him to take the fall, necessary for him to step away from all of the comforts he’s known and move onto something new. It is, at its very basis, a survival tactic – the amputation of an emotional tether in order to save the rest of his soul. And if there’s anything Hunter’s been good at with or without Bobbi, it’s been survival. 

So he gives – he gives her their apartment, their city, their life – all of it summed up in a neat packet of papers stuffed into a manila envelope. He gives her the friend group and the drinking spots and all of the places they thought they would deem theirs forever, signed and slid silently across the table during a terse lunch with their lawyer. He gives her the sunsets and the midnights and everything in between, because it’s all he can do, giving – the last thing he wants to do is dig his heels into something they both want to be done, so he’ll give what he has until he’s got nothing left.

Everything she wants, she will have – because she is the one thing he won’t. 

He’ll give, he’ll scar, and he’ll survive. And he’ll walk away, and one day, maybe he’ll be able to hear her voice without feeling his chest cavity shatter again into those million little glass pieces. Maybe he’ll get to a day where he’ll be able to acknowledge both of them for what they were – a beautiful fireworks show burning without abandon in the thrill of being in love, a sad, beautiful tragic love affair incapable of understanding that there was an end until it was staring the end down some fifty years too early.

Maybe next time they’d wait for the ending. For now, all he can do is regather his sparklers and hope they’ll be lit again someday. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm open for all comments and feedback below and at @justanalto on tumblr :) (If you're about to yell at me for it being a trash can fire, even better.)


End file.
